Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Kent, Sarah

Titel

Post-Empire Imaginaries? Anglophone Literature, History, and the Demise of Empires eds. by Barbara Buchenau, Virginia Richter, and Marijke Denger (review)

Ist Teil von

• Ariel, 2017, Vol.48 (3), p.249-252

Ort / Verlag

Calgary: Johns Hopkins University Press

Erscheinungsjahr

2017

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Project MUSE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Initially drawing on Lacan's conceptions of the imaginary as "an image of totality which is placed in an irrecoverable position of alterity" (Buchenau and Richter xix), the introduction lays out the ways in which empire thrives in the imaginary, serving as a source of creativity and social cohesion. Examining The Bastard of Istanbul and two journalistic columns by Turkish American author Elif Shafak, Furlanetto persuasively argues that nostalgic fantasies of the Ottoman Empire and desire for the American "melting-pot myth" function as a Turkish political project to re-envision the contemporary Turkish nation as cosmopolitan, inclusive, and tolerant (171). While the collection fulfills its mission statement to "offer a broad … panorama of historical cases, theoretical elaborations, literary engagements, and representations culled from various media" (xvi), Post-Empire Imaginaries? is aware of the omissions in its archival project.